Romanian Roses
by Rose Priestess
Summary: By now, the students of Ohtori Gakuen have grown accustomed to the various and oddly colored shades of roses tended to by Himemiya Anshi. But when several bushes of black roses appear outside the Chairman's wing, nobody is quite sure just what to make of


"Romanian Roses"  
by Rose Priestess  
  
Obligatory Disclaimer: The characters of "Shoujo Kakumei Utena" belong to Saito Chiho, Be-Pa-Pas, etc.  
  
It was a cool, breezy Friday afternoon at Ohtori Gakuen and the sky was littered with swelled storm clouds prepared to burst. The fading daylight cast a sickening hue against the charcoal marshmallows. There was something in the air that day, and one really couldn't tell what it was, but it was fear. Fear, in this case, meant nothing bizarre had occurred thus far, which was a cause for alarm indeed.  
  
Tenjou Utena and Himemiya Anshi were strolling back to the dorm room they shared, when something caught their attention. A large formation of rose bushes were clustered around the base of the tower that served as the Chairman's wing. Roses were Utena's favorite flowers, especially the white ones, but these were dead black. This didn't seem right to her; roses were supposed to be light, happy colors like red and pink and yellow, not black.   
  
"Ne, Himemiya, what's with all the roses?" Utena said, staring out into the veritable sea of ebony.  
  
"Well," the petite Indian girl began, "I believe these must be the flowers Onii-sama special ordered for the academy. According to him, they can only be grown in the deepest parts of Transylvania. However, I can't think of why they wouldn't be in the greenhouse..."  
  
"Romanian roses, hm...?" Utena said quietly to herself. At almost the second the words escaped her lips, a loud crack of thunder rippled across the sky accompanied by long, spidery veins of lightning and the downpour began. Utena and Anshi raced to the door to avpid getting drenched by the breaking storm.  
  
Just as the rose-embossed elevator doors separated, Anshi's pet monkey-mouse (though she would adamantly refer to him as her "friend"), Chuchu, rushed out into the rain, nearly knocking them down.  
  
"Wha-? Chuchu?!" Utena cried in surprise. "Come back here, Chuchu!"  
  
Anshi looked on worriedly. "Oh dear..."  
  
"It's all right, Himemiya. He'll come back in a few minutes," Utena reassured her companion.  
  
"I guess so, Utena-sama..." Anshi watched as Chuchu quickly disappeared behind the side of the building.  
  
@---/--- @---/--- @---/--- @---/--- @---/--- @---/--- @---/--- @---/---   
  
Later that night, Utena sat up in her and Anshi's room laboriously slaving over her math book. Sheesh, linear equations and simultaneous equations were so much easier when Miki was tutoring me, she thought. She rubbed her sleepy eyes and glanced at the blinking digital clock on the nightstand. 11:30 PM. Utena yawned and closed the brown paper covered book. Himemiya was always so late on the nights she saw her brother.  
  
Utena rose from her chair and went to the gigantic picture window in front of their beds. She pressed a hand to the icy glass as her Rose Signet sparkled in the moonlight. She hadn't seen Chuchu since his little "incident" earlier, and frankly she was becoming a bit worried.  
  
*tck*  
  
*tck* *tck*   
  
There was a strange sound at her window. At first she thought someone was throwing pea-sized pebbles at the glass, but soon she made out the sound out to be some sort of scratching. Utena put her face to the glass and squinted into the night, searching for some sign of what was causing the noise.  
  
It couldn't be a person scratching at the window since their room was located on the top floor of the tower. And it most certainly wasn't a tree branch because no trees grew close enough. Then what was it?  
  
Then she heard it. A soft, whispery voice calling out to her, "Utena..."  
  
"Oh my God," she gasped and drew away from the glass.  
  
Another noise was present with the first one. This new sounds was an unmistakable whining of sorts that could have only belonged to Chuchu. He was clearly whimpering in pain.  
  
Before she had time to react, an object came hurtling through the window, shattering it to a million pieces, and causing Utena to tumble to the floor. She was okay, just covered with tiny slivers of glass. She winced and picked up what had broken the window when she was realized it was Chuchu. A dead Chuchu. He was stiff and lifeless and she saw two samll puncture wounds placed neatly on the jugular. A bit of crusty, dried blood seeped from the holes.   
  
"No..." she managed, trying to hold down the now rising bile in her throat. "I'm going to find whatever did that to Chuchu and I'll make it wish it had never been born," Utena said in a steely, determined voice, tears welling up in her strikingly blue, yet pupil-less, eyes.  
  
Always one for justice, Utena found a flashlight and made her way outside, carefully scanning the darkness for Chuchu's killer.  
  
"Where are you?" Utena asked in a clear and angry voice. "How dare you prey on a small, helpless animal?" She turned around quickly as she heard a shuffling amidst the bushes.  
  
Utena heard another voice, not the same whispery one as before, but a low, guttural growl. "Utena..."  
  
She cast her gaze in the direction of the voice. It was coming from the base of the tower, from the Romanian roses.  
  
The rose bush whipped out a long, thorny vine that wrapped around Utena's neck and pulled her forcefully to the cold, hard ground. The bone shattered instantly, sending fragments of it piercing through the flesh. "Himemiya..." she uttered just before losing consciousness as tears streamed down her face. The roses dragged her into the bush, which is exactly where Anshi found her the next morning while tending to the garden. A broken neck and two tiny puncture wounds seemingly branded on the side of her throat.  
  
Anshi keot watering the roses mechanically, as though finding lifeless corpses was all part of the Rose Bride's job description. Brushing aside several of the roses, Anshi removed the Rose Signet off Utena's slightly bloody hand and slipped it into her skirt pocket. She closed her emerald green eys solemnly and sighed heavily. "Onii-sama will not be at all pleased with this turn of events..." 


End file.
